Microsft has made hard statements about perfomance improvements in Longhorn. They claim that applications will load 15% faster than in XP, while boot time is decreased by 50%. They also claimed that Longhorn will be able to wake up from sleep in 2 seconds. Users should also expect half as many reboots during patching. Time to dust of those trustworthy stopwatches.

It's incredibly easy to sit there and prattle on about improvements to your software before it's released. It's another thing entirely to deliver.

So true. You can always guess the date and time MS releases one of these pieces of information about Longhorn just to keep people and sites talking about it, but at the end what really matters is the final product.

As one famously said here at OSNews, "stop talking and show me the product".

>> It's incredibly easy to sit there and prattle on about improvements to your software before it's released. It's another thing entirely to deliver.

It's also very easy to sit there and bash something you've never seen or used.

I have no love for M$, but given the quantum leap XP was over it's predecessors, I'm willing to give them the benefit of a doubt...

Especially with the 'alternatives' coming up way short in most arenas I consider important. Font Rendering (Cleartype kicks EVERYTHING else's ass, ESPECIALLY freetype), available applications, ease of hardware changes, and cost. Some hit one, or the other, but not all four.

Yes, but XP was marketted at the home users (2000 wasn't marketed towards the home users), so XP definitely was a huge milestone. I consider it one of the sweetest victories by FOSS, that MS felt compelled to actually deliver something semi-usable. Given the increased competition on the desktop market, Longhorn better be good
(though I get the feeling they're fumbling because of the pressure)

Especially with the 'alternatives' coming up way short in most arenas I consider important. Font Rendering (Cleartype kicks EVERYTHING else's ass, ESPECIALLY freetype)

I use Gentoo Linux and Gnome on LCDs with subpixel antialiasing and the Bitstream Vera fonts. The fonts look wonderful. When I went to use Windows XP for playing Half-Life 2, I was amazed at how bad the Windows Cleartype fonts looked in comparison. I was also amazed at how badly Windows handles a 150 DPI screen (1920x1200 laptop), while Gnome applications scale without a problem.

So in summary, bad fonts are one problem the Linux alternatives don't have.

>> So in summary, bad fonts are one problem the Linux alternatives don't have.

Even when you crank it up to do that though, it has a MAJOR problem with Kerning. Sure, each character is well formed, but if the spacing between characters is all over the place it kinda defeats the point.

Good example is to open up an editor and type the word "spacing" or "difficult", then go to the beginning of the line and start adding spaces...

and watch the character kerning jump all over creation.

I don't know what a "diffic ult" or "spacin g" is, apart from BAD kerning.

And to my eyes Cleartype looks superior to freetype with subpixel aliasing... ASSUMING you use the cleartype tuner.

Even when you crank it up to do that though, it has a MAJOR problem with Kerning. Sure, each character is well formed, but if the spacing between characters is all over the place it kinda defeats the point.

Good example is to open up an editor and type the word "spacing" or "difficult", then go to the beginning of the line and start adding spaces...

Not on my system it doesn't. Works perfectly. In fact, I've not seem that happen on any modern Linux system.

And to my eyes Cleartype looks superior to freetype with subpixel aliasing... ASSUMING you use the cleartype tuner.

And I find the exact opposite to be true. ClearType produces fonts that are blurry, ill-defined, and have horrible colour bleeding. Freetype (assuming you have it configured properly) produces far more legible text on my system.

Could be a difference in the screen. I've seen laptops where Cleartype simply looks blurry, but I've seen others where it looks worse than it does on a CRT (and no, it wasn't configured incorrectly - it simply could not be made to work acceptably).

It's also very easy to sit there and bash something you've never seen or used.

It's also impossible to defend something that you have never used or seen because it does not exist yet (in anything other than pre-beta form).

I have no love for M$, but given the quantum leap XP was over it's predecessors, I'm willing to give them the benefit of a doubt...

Quantum leap? XP is nothing more than 2000 with a few added features, basically a point release. 2000 is an evolution of NT. Where exactly is the quantum leap you speak of? The same basic OS has been around for 10 years.

Especially with the 'alternatives' coming up way short in most arenas I consider important. Font Rendering (Cleartype kicks EVERYTHING else's ass, ESPECIALLY freetype)

Whoa, slow down. Have you ever used Linux? I can never believe when people continue to bitch about fonts in Linux. There is nothing wrong with the fonts in Linux anymore. In fact I can never quite get the fonts in Windows to look as good as the ones in Linux, so please stop using an argument that has been dead for years now.

available applications,

Like what? Games? Most people don't care about games. If there is something else you are sorely missing then why don't you name it specifically?

ease of hardware changes

Changing hardware is actually easier. Drivers are really the only thing you have to worry about and they are built into the Linux kernel. You shouldn't have to touch a thing. With Windows on the other hand you have to install the drivers off of a CD or from the internet.

and cost

This one just makes me laugh. I can't possibley see how $85 is less than $0.

"Whoa, slow down. Have you ever used Linux? I can never believe when people continue to bitch about fonts in Linux. There is nothing wrong with the fonts in Linux anymore. In fact I can never quite get the fonts in Windows to look as good as the ones in Linux, so please stop using an argument that has been dead for years now."

"Like what? Games? Most people don't care about games. If there is something else you are sorely missing then why don't you name it specifically?"

Ok, here are the apps I use on a regular basis that are available only for Windows: Trillian (yeah I know there are others available for Linux but they suck in comparison), iTunes, Office (sorry, Open Office sucks in comparison), OneNote, Canon Photo software for importing /managing my photos from my digital camera, SnagIt, Feed Demon, MS SQL Server, Expensable desktop client, Siebel client, Dreamweaver.

I also run Oracle, which is available on Linux... however Oracle is damn near impossible to install on Linux (which is Oracle's fault, but still...)

It would be impossible for me to switch to Linux at work given my need to run Expensable, Siebel, SQL Server and Dreamweaver. At home I would have to sacrifice iTunes and the nice photo software I have.

It would be impossible for me to switch to Linux at work given my need to run Expensable, Siebel, SQL Server and Dreamweaver. At home I would have to sacrifice iTunes and the nice photo software I have.

It wouldn't be even close to impossible for you to switch. The only problem is that you are not willing to try new software. I create database driven websites with just Bluefish, MySQL, and NCFTP. You can use OpenOffice as a database client if need be, but I beleive there are other ones out there.

Like Windows XP, I would bet that all the "performance" will degrade over time.

After you install a few applications... a few new drivers... maybe upgrade your hardware after install... then Windows gets very very slow. This is true for pretty much every version of Windows. And the more you install/uninstall, the more likely you are to corrupt your registry or do something else that mandates paving the machine.

If you look at an XP system that has had a bunch of apps installed and has not been paved in a while, then the boot times are often pathetic. Even with 15K U320 SCSI drives. A 50% decrease in boot times would be a big change, but also would still be a long time.

Longhorn must deliver on the empty promises of .NET. For example, .NET installs get corrupted easily, returning funny errors like 2908 when you try and install a new .NET app. Microsoft's tech bulletin says to try and uncorrupt your registry and if that fails... pave the machine.

It will be interesting to see Longhorn when it finally ships. I do hope the best for it, but am realistic that it will take 2-3 more years past ship to get it all working well.

By paving, you mean re-install? I agree that the tendency for Windows's performance to degrade does seem to correlate with the number of installs and uninstalls. My new laptop runs faster than my older desktop which is a dual processor Xeon with WinXP! I have never understood and still don't understand why this happens.

I do think that the anti-virus and anti-spamware software produce a big performance hit. Processes are always waiting for clearance from these gatekeepers before they do anything. I just wish MS would implement some of the security features of Linux/UNIX/OS X and do away with the necessity for anti-virus software altogether. Occasionally I read that the NT kernel is derived from the VMS OS. Well, I remember having a VAX/VMS account in my grad school days and I never remember the VAX's being down because of viruses. Of course, the late 80's were more innocent times. I wonder if the same thing happens in Linux. Gnome 2.10 seems to load a little more slowly than earlier versions but I do not have as much experience with Linux.

Well, I remember having a VAX/VMS account in my grad school days and I never remember the VAX's being down because of viruses. Of course, the late 80's were more innocent times.

In all fairness, the worst worms to ever hit the internet percentage wise, and that had the biggest debilitating effects on internet use in general, were unix worms in the 80s. All 3-5 of them of course. But the effects of having an OS monoculture became glaringly obvious.

With any OS the performance will be affected by other factors whether third party software or hardware not meeting developers minimum system requirements. A developer whether Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat, Apple, etc cannot be expected to take into account all issues that may arise with third party software. That responsibility is basically on the third party software developer to ensure their software will not significantly impact the OS it's running on. Also part of the responsibility is on the end user to ensure they don't have services running that they don't immediately need to use. With Linux distributions I've seen users who complaine about slow systems even though the reality is they decided to install multiple applications during the installation or after that they don't really use. Instead users should streamline their systems by installing only applications that they need so as to offer the best over all performance.

how the fsck can microsoft say they can reduce reboots on system updates when they are not the only provider of windows software ?
how much software that you install actually installs parts of itself into the system ?

microsoft crap means nothing on paper, lets see what you can do today!

Those statements by Microsoft are meaningless without some indication of the hardware specs for Longhorn. Does Microsoft really mean that Longhorn will be quicker than XP on equivalent hardware? And what will these hardware specs be? Are they talking about current machines? Who knows what PCs will be like in 2006 - other than the fact that they'll be much faster than today.

Yeah, yeah... I'll believe it when I see it. And windows 95 was supposed to be the last systen not using NT. Windows 98 and Windows Millennium came after that before they finally made good on their promise with XP.

Cut in half boot time is totally possible, depending what you consider 100%. My Win XP SP 2 work PC boots to the login dialog in 20 seconds or so. It is hooked to a network but the network is not set up to do authentication or anything centralized. So I bet they will never take my setup as a measure since is is very common to see windows take a lot more to boot in other circumstances.
About application startup, they must be talking about apps using the windows API and DLLs. Anyway 15 % is not measurable when word, excel or even open office take 2,3 and 10 seconds resp.

Yet here it's more like 4 minutes to the login screen. It has been long since the fresh install of XP, got longer when SP1, then SP2 were added. Office never started in under a minute. The whole thing just sucks. :/

Learn howto maintain your OS before prattling such figures. XP is as fast for me today as the day I installed it, no, actually faster as SP2 gave us a more recently compiled kernel optimised more for modern architectures.

Ok, it suchs that Windows needs hand holding but it is easy to keep it chugging along very quick if you know anything about it. Try disabling crap software loadups at boot time and other cruft that might be installed as a part of most commercial software nowdays. Worst purps of this are Dell, Compact and HP who have a load of shit loading with the OS that is totally not needed. I call it verndor added crapware.

thats strange. my current xp installation is over 2 years old and is used dayly. also in the meantime i have installed and uninstalled lots of software, drivers and even changed the mainboard (it works if you know how to do it) and graphics card, still no part of my install seems to be corrupted or slower. boot time increased, but by a hardly noticeble amount.

thats strange. my current xp installation is over 2 years old and is used dayly. also in the meantime i have installed and uninstalled lots of software, drivers and even changed the mainboard (it works if you know how to do it) and graphics card, still no part of my install seems to be corrupted or slower. boot time increased, but by a hardly noticeble amount.

maybe you just dont know what you do?

I've used Windows since 3.0, and I used to claim I knew Windows, but not anymore. The complexity of modern Windows is beyond me. There are too many moving parts.

Across many machines and many corporations, it is a well-documented fact that adding software, adding/changing drivers, and making hardware changes will gradually (or spontaneously) cause Windows to deteriorate.

I've never had an XP installation go more than about 2 years before the machine was so screwed up it needed to be paved. So considering your time frame, I'd make sure you have an image backup ready to restore from ;-)

I believe you, but not everyone is so fortunate. I've repaved numerous systems for work and for friends/family and one thing you often hear after re-installing Windows is "wow, my computer is so much faster now!"

Something is slowing down their PC, be it spyware, disk fragmentation, registry cruft, or just plain bad design. I have not had the same problem with Macs. They don't seem to slow down over time, or at least it is not nearly as noticeable.

maybe you just dont know what you do?
I amways had that problems with windows, and so do about all of my computer savvy friends (including people who fix PCs for a living)

Maybe I don't know what I do. Maybe one should be very careful when using windows and maintaining a windows box, which I am not (I have better things to do with my time than continuously cleanup and tweak my system).

Thing is, I never had performance degrading overtime problems with linux, and I don't spend my time taking care of my linux system either, which I think is as it should be - an operating system isn't supposed to get in your way and always need maintenance and cleanup to keep working properly.

the preview version of longhorn which they gave away at the developer meeting runs very fluid on a 800MHz p3 with 512MB ram. but i can't say anything about the speed of the new 3d accelerated surface, since our testing mashine had no 3d acceleration (an antique matrox graphics card) and i have heard that version wasn't including the winfx anyway.

that might be true, but honestly, it boots in halv the time of my debian installation and programms start a couple of times faster. so i can realy se no point in whining about the tiny possible bit of lost in speed that comes to xp with the years when it is still so much faster than any equal powerfull os for my hardware.
and i'm not a windows zealot... on my laptop i only have mepis linux, which is good enough as a pure workstation. but i expect a little bit more from my home desktop...

Looks good. Too bad these numbers doesn't reflect the today's hardware improvements, but still good news.

IMHO, the more interesting part is:
"Beta 2 isn't slated until some time in the first half of 2006, however. Beta 2 will be the first wide-scale Longhorn beta release to feature the new Aero user interface."

...just imagining how different Aero will be from current placeholder theme... the present 'placeholder' has some good interface improvements already (like the way the folder icon shows the folder's content for example), and MS will probably hold other improvements until Aero's debut.

* launch applications 15 percent faster than Windows XP does
* boot PCs 50 percent faster than they boot currently
* reduce the number of system images required by 50 percent

If you look the latest, then actually 50% gain on same hardware can be possible. 50% less system images means much less disk access at startup time and less disk access while loading applications - they're using system libs extensively.

From other side (depend on configuration), much of the boot time is wasted to initialization various hardware. If some mouse takes 5 seconds to initialize, then nothing helps - unless they just show deskop before it's even known, does mouse work or not. (Well, maybe they already are doing so with mouse; unfortunately there's other hardware, what cannot be deferred this way so easily).

Like what I'm noticed - my XP in VirtualPC boots up much faster than the real one. Of course there are no noticeable timeouts for virtual hardware initialization, so is VPC network emulator (DHCP server) faster.

But let's wait and see. I won't buy new hardware for Longhorn anyway:)

50% less system images does not refer to disk access. It refers to disk images made for corporate and OEM rollout. Longhorn will allow more flexibility in creating and maintaining system images. New imaages won't be required for various localizations, images can be directly updated and have patches integrated, etc.

If you look the latest, then actually 50% gain on same hardware can be possible. 50% less system images means much less disk access at startup time and less disk access while loading applications - they're using system libs extensively.

Actually, I'll bet that at least some of that 50% comes from what Mac OS X has been doing for some time (I think) and what Linux distributions have started exploring:

3GHz CPUs are not required for Longhorn. ACPI BIOSes (no APM) will be a likely requirement however (not a big deal these days). At the lowest end, Longhorn will support some classes of Pentium III/K6-2 on notebook computers.

Especially with the 'alternatives' coming up way short in most arenas I consider important. Font Rendering (Cleartype kicks EVERYTHING else's ass, ESPECIALLY freetype), available applications, ease of hardware changes, and cost. Some hit one, or the other, but not all four.

TRUE THAT!!! I can not stand Linux/BSD/any other os JUST BECAUSE OF THIS FACT!!! otherwise I'd LOVE to use linux.

Especially with the 'alternatives' coming up way short in most arenas I consider important. Font Rendering (Cleartype kicks EVERYTHING else's ass, ESPECIALLY freetype), available applications, ease of hardware changes, and cost. Some hit one, or the other, but not all four.

TRUE THAT!!! I can not stand Linux/BSD/any other os JUST BECAUSE OF THIS FACT!!! otherwise I'd LOVE to use linux.

Linux doesn't slow down either...but on some systems with high-load gnome or kde, it's already a little slow. Lightning fast with XFCE or the command-line...but over time it seems to run the same and never slow down...I have seen Windows slow down, but the post by Nate is important in that it can be a lot of different things and that it's hard to know what is causing it.

However fast it may be does not worry me. I worry more about the stability and security. Windows has generally been incredibly less stable than Linux. What I would like to see is a migration to the unix base. I would like to see Microsoft do as Macintosh did by switching to a unix based system with and emulator for all of the old applications. This would allow programmers more freedom. They could write POSIX compliant software. This would mean users from Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, BSD, and Solaris could be using the same software... what a beautiful idea, no?

The reports hit home for me and address my two biggest pet peeves with SuSE 9.3:

1. Boot time - The time it takes to boot SuSE 9.3 is unacceptable and borderline ridiculous..

2. Sleep/wake performance - It finally works on my Inspiron 600 but my goodness is it awkward and slow. It's more akin to hibernation than suspend as far as I can tell. I avoid it

Microsoft is really focusing on the things that make the computing experience transparent and fun. Meanwhile, I am getting old watching Linux boot. Since I still have to deal in a dual boot situation, this really makes me avoid Linux sometimes, just because I can boot XP in about 20 seconds and it takes SuSE more like a minute.

You are welcome
Indeed, I believe that Mandriva is now a much better choice than SUSE.
Another great favourite of mine is Kanotix: free, complete, great support, easy to use thanks to Kano's scripts and the wiki. Great laptop support as well.

Yea, it's a great OS too; once you install the gnu utilities and recompile your kernel to work with your ext3 disks .
I must say they have the easiest kernel recompiles and installs; but the fact that you have to do it more often because of the lack of modules...

It does boot faster, probably saves you a solid 25% of the boot time by being a big c program instead of shell scripts: Of course it's probably 5 times faster than Mandrake, but Mandrake's never been known for quick boots.

There's actually a lot of truth to your sarcastic statement. The linux kernel is so configurable, usually problems with it are with the configuration being wrong.

But you're too wrapped up in your "superior" bsd habits to accept the idea of linux and bsd coexisting. I'm just guessing here, based on previous "superior" bsd users I've met. It's one of the things that's always kept me off bsd; aside from the technical issues.

No i am not a BSD fanatic. My favourite OS is Windows XP for reasons obvious to many and not obvious at all to many others

Now as for BSD, i like it because it has a strict focus and it delivers it well. Even Linus acknowledge that people in BSD are perfectionist. I happens to like them more.

Now as for boot time, i did a fresh install of Redhat 9 and i did an install of FreeBSD, freeBSD on the same machine takes only 20-25% time to boot as compared to Linux and shutdown in BSD is almost instantaneous where as Linux keep spewing tons of stuff like shutting down blah blah...

You may recommend me another distro now but you know how many would i try. I am happy with Redhat 9 for now and no i am not using FreeBSD because it didn't have recent version of some software that i wanted the time i built my machine and I don't usually upgrade too often unless i have to. Its a pain to reinstall a new OS and configure the things all over again...usually at least 1 full day job.

"Now as for boot time, i did a fresh install of Redhat 9 and i did an install of FreeBSD, freeBSD on the same machine takes only 20-25% time to boot as compared to Linux and shutdown in BSD is almost instantaneous where as Linux keep spewing tons of stuff like shutting down blah blah... "

Have you tried Fedora Core 4? Boots up in 20 sec
flat on my Intel Pentium IV with 256 MB RAM. Shuts down silently, faster than Win 2K with no blah...blah...

When you blanket-blaim "Linux" desktops, make
sure you know what you are talking about.

Try running the same services for a fair test. RedHat starts virtually every service that anyone could ever want including sendmail.
Now, I take it you did it with Fbsd 4.x and not 5.x; as you would want to compare versions from a similar time period.

When you load your fbsd box down as bad as the redhat box is you'll see similar boot times: Or, redhat-config-services and you can remove some services and shave a good quarter of its boot time off.

That said, it's not that much faster. I've used both quite a bit as well, it's twice as fast maaaaaybe when you have tons of extra services for Linux.

It is truly a pain in the neck to install a new OS. Although, I always keep a machine around that I'm content to leave in a non-working state for trying distributions. I recently tried kanotix on it and was pleased to see everything work: This is after FC4 failed to find my synaptics touchpad! I just wanted GCC4!!!!

On every system I've installed SuSE Linux Professional on I've timed faster boot to log-in screen than on identical systems running Windows XP Professional w/SP2 installed. The performance and stability has improved with each release. In your case you should check to see you don't have any errors displayed in the system log or unnecessary services running which can impact performance.

Yet another delusional anonymous.
If you you are waiting for a big migration to OSX, you can wait till the end of the world.
People are Not.Going.To.Pay.For.Mac.Hardware.
When are you Mac zealots going to understand that?
A Mac Mini with a couple of badly needed extra features costs here in Europe as much as a PC with double the speed and the features.
Not to mention the thirld world, which is the true battleground at the moment: buying a Mac? ROFLMAO, they don't even know what it is.

"Facts: People are moving from Windows/Linux to MacOSX and they are paying for Apple hardware."

It is not as if a few thousands more users means that Apple is taking the world by storm.
My facts: I have been following personal computers from the very beginning. I have lived in many European countries, especially of course Italy, but also the UK, the Netherlands and Germany. I have met thousands of computer users. I have seen (and briefly used) Macs only twice: in 1984, when the cost of a Mac was about ten good monthly salaries, and many years later my house mates in Brighton used a Mac.
Here in Italy Macs are virtually unknown: some computer shops have never heard of Apple and Mac.

>>"Not to mention the thirld world, which is the true battleground at the moment: buying a Mac? ROFLMAO, they don't even know what it is."

Fascinating business model to focus on customers that have no money<<

And yet Microsoft is extremely keen to retain that market, even if that means millions of pirated copies or selling their software for much less.

Concluding: I am a self confessed geek and I'd like to try and possibly use a Mac OSX: but I'll never accept to be ripped off and pay for hardware twice the price I'd pay for an ordinary PC.

As to ordinary people they know only Windows. It is very easy to introduce them to linux because the cost is 0Eur. And in fact there are quite a few linux users in this 9,000 inhabitants town. If I told people to spend a minimum of 800Eur in order to try a new computer with an unknown OS, I would in no time gain a reputation for being mad. And this is by no means a town with low living standards, just the opposite.

I can only speak of my experience here in the US and I can tell you that the Mac is becoming a very popular alternative to Windows. Next year MacOSX will run on Intel chips so the argument of hardware being half the speed won't hold up. Heck I use an iBook G3/500 daily for work, a laptop by many PC user's standpoint to be useless because the processor is 500MHZ.

Also MS is interested in proliferating Windows, they are NOT interested in third world countries.

Longhorn Beta is slow as a snail and doesn't even come close to XP. Oh, and it is extremely unstable as well. At the same time we know Microsoft's track record of bending the truth, hyping things, and delaying them for years just as they did with Longhorn so far. I do not believe them one single word and in the meantime I don't care anymore either since I've also become a happy Linux user.

A Mac Mini with a couple of badly needed extra features costs here in Europe as much as a PC with double the speed and the features.
Not to mention the thirld world, which is the true battleground at the moment: buying a Mac?

Yes, I suppose if you're a 3rd worlder living in a mud hut in europe then I guess you would have to settle for DOS, or a commodre 64, or Linux, or whatever. For the rest of us, we appreciate a Unix with a usable desktop and relegate BSD, Solaris, and Linux (all interchangeable) to the server closet.

1. TV out on Nvidia drivers with DFP. X-Org/GDM only sees the TV as the primary display with all the head aches associated with it being such. Not that I can't get both working but login via TV Display is a real bore.

2. Swapping out sound hardware, both supported according to ALSA but no joy and repeated no module for device for my Echo Gina3G

3. Applications. I want some of the pro audio apps that are common to Windows and OS-X. Nothing Linux has that I want on Windows but plenty on Windows that I want on Linux.

4. Gnome issues, stable and consistant UI but it is a work in progress.

All that being said
Linux will not require me to piss around with maintenance tools once setup the way I like. It is easier to update software and I like spatial Nautilus.

I use the same programs on Windows as Linux except for audio apps and I want native VST's on Linux and Tracktion on Linux before I consider jumping for good. Actually my hopes are pinned on Zeta/Haiku which is a great potential media workstation OS but again needing Pro apps to take it somewhere.

I also aknowledge that there is some serious apps for Linux in CGI based content creation but audio is a fn joke as is audio support on Linux.

My only problem with Linux is now i'm capable to get everything ( no matter what) up and running on every distro without googling to much it's hard to choose what's going to stay on the box.Boot speed isn't really a concern of mine since i mostly like to use a 0+1 SATA RAID configuration (SuSE boots under 20 sec).Since i like to listen to music being shouted over the net or being broadcast on the cable i don't really need extra i-tunes costs.On AMD64 there is remarkably less performance differences when running Linux ( all boot/run fast) personally i think it's nice to have a lot of applications on a DVD9,preferrably both w32 and x86_64 (why should i buy two separate boxes?).Yeah i think the chemeleon is bound to stay,curious to see what the next version will feel like.

Especially with the 'alternatives' coming up way short in most arenas I consider important. Font Rendering (Cleartype kicks EVERYTHING else's ass, ESPECIALLY freetype), available applications, ease of hardware changes, and cost. Some hit one, or the other, but not all four.

Let's tackle this one bit at a time, shall we?

Fonts: Yeah, ok, basic freetype is bad, right? Well, try using anti-aliasing and a better font package (urwfonts is one that I like) and you'll probably be pretty happy with it. Also, is it just me, or does ClearType make LCD screens look like crap no matter what settings you use? Personally I get better results out of my system here after adding better fonts than I did with windows installed.

Available applications: Blame developers, or blame your packaging tools. Using the FreeBSD ports selection and pkg_add I haven't really had any software I couldn't find/install very easily, and I have software that works for everything I need to do. Actually it covers most of what I *want* to do also, more so than windows did (at least without spending $600+ on an application or having to install a better command interpreter for scripting). Also, I don't spend time dealing with issues like "ERROR! MSVC6.DLL NOT FOUND!" with a long time following in which I search for the Visual C runtime files in vain, finally getting them from some weird Australian gaming site, but not finding them anywhere on the MS website.

Ease of hardware changes: Hmm, yes, I can see that adding a single line to a module-loading file is a lot harder than having to go through XPs attempts to lock you out of your hardware decisions, having to wait while it installs the hardware without asking me about drivers (it *always* chooses the least functional driver for me), then having to go in and reinstall the driver, click "yes I know it's unsigned" 400 times, having to turn off "signed driver warning" to save myself future headaches, have it ignore my telling it to ignore driver signing, resulting in more "yes I know you jerk" boxes showing up, then having to reboot. Erm, wait, what point were you trying to make again?

Cost: Yes, I can see that needing a semi-new machine is a lot cheaper than being able to pick up an older one at a garage sale for $15 and being able to use it for your daily needs, great argument there.

Unless you buy all that crap about having to retrain people to use new software, which takes what, a day, maybe two? I mean, it all looks the same anyway. Ok, so, average employee in a company makes, oh, let's call it $20/hr. Ok, so, that's two 8 hour days, which brings the total to... $320? Now, let's compare that to the list price of a copy of Windows XP Pro, right now: MS Recommended price... :::drum roll:::...wow, it's down to $300, ok, so that's cheaper than retraining someone.

Now, let's say you have to upgrade to Longhorn in three years to keep your support good (do you really think they won't try to cancel XP support as soon as possible to force upgrades? They are trying it with 2000, and XP isn't all that much newer.), then buy new computers at 3Ghz+ and at least, say, 768MB of memory to run said longhorn, plus the yearly support fee to microsoft on a per employee basis (not included in this list for simplicity reasons).

What do you think Dell will be charging for a system like that in three years? $900? Ok $900, including the $300 OS, vs $320 to retrain people to use a slightly different office tool.

Which is less? Now we'll ad a multi-thousand dollar server system (Windows 2003 + 25 CALS), plus say 50 employees, which brings us to $48999. Oh wait, let's include the hardware cost on the server, we'll say an even $52000, how's that sound? Wait wait wait, we need to upgrade the server for the new OS to get access to all the new features. Whoops, there goes another $4000, so $56000 then, right? Ok, that's not too bad for a company that size.... especially when you campare it to the cost of retraining everyone to use a very slightly different looking desktop, e-mail software, and office suite that won't ever really need to be replaced... I mean, that's like $16000! Oh wait...

It seems like everything possible is built as a module to me? All loadable through "kldload modulenamehere.ko"

I don't know where this "lack of modules" idea comes from, they've been there at least since 4.x... yes, you can turn them off if you don't need them (I tend to, it cuts compile times down to about 10% of the time), but it builds them all by default?

Normal, from an Athlon 64 to an Athlon 64 X2, you just get 70%/90% speed improvement, provided you don't scam the threads management between the two cores like the current version of Windows do (loss of benefit from the dual core, check the reviews of X2).

Booting time reduced by 50% ? Sure, drives will be faster in 1/2 years, Microsoft knows it because under NDA with HD factories.

Microsoft should try to invest money on optimizing their OS instead to 'serialize' in XML everything they get under the hand. Booting from XML, saving DB in XML, doing anything in XML in time consuming in parsing text files. This is plain stupid. Binary files were made to speed things because close to the UC format (binary numbers ready to be processed).

I just want to say that the new system for turned down posts is untransparent. Before, you could see *which* posts were turned down and form your own opinion.

While I (with all respect) think that moderating in the past has not always been 100% consistant, at least it was honest in that you could see the modded down posts.

Now there is no way to see them at a glance, since you get the same page with the modded down comments included, but they're very hard to find. I tried displaying all comments and searching for the string '-5', but it seems modded down comments aren't even rated this way!

It doesn't matter how long the boot lasts. More important thing is, how many times you have to reboot. Linux is meant to boot only once. On Windows you have to reboot every now and then. I really don't understand people who shut down their computers, except when facing a storm or other special conditions.

"If Linux is slow or doesn't work, its either your mistake or its wrong distribution...excuses and more excuses == Linux

Try FreeBSD...it boots and shuts down in 20% time of Linux."

Aren't you contradicting yourself quite a bit?
You say that if linux is slow it is either your mistake or the wrong distro. But then you say that you use Red Hat 9, that it is slow but you don't consider trying something else (hint: something more modern, RH 9 is old as dirt in the fast evolving world of linux)

I hope you people realize that Windows uses al sorts of precashing, preloading and holding apps in memory. Also fast boot time dont mean nothing when Windows dont even detect major parts of you system (motherboard chipset ect)

One of the reasons why Linux is slower at boot is because it detects all hardware on boot, this is a good thing especially if you swap hardware regularly. People reinstall Windows to get thingks working proper, i.e Via to nForce chipset. Looks like Longhorn is going to have the same old problem so get ready to reinstall you Windows users :-)

"One of the reasons why Linux is slower at boot is because it detects all hardware on boot, this is a good thing especially if you swap hardware regularly."

That was exactly my experience. We had a our mail server
running on Debian woody. One day the box just started
rebooting by itself. I suspected that the HD is good and
it was the motherboard that was giving us problems. I took another PC and mount the HD from our mail server
and it just booted, finding all the hardware on the MB.
No need to install diff chip set. In less than an hour
we had our mail server running again.

Linux does not support parallel service during boot proccess in contrast to windows, BSD, OS X.
It means that linux will always start slower (on similar hardware) than other OSes because each service has to wait "in line" for time to boot. If you are getting opposite results, it means that your windows xp installation is screwed. Nothing else.

...Linux does not support parallel service during boot proccess in contrast to...

"Jimmy Wennlund has been doing to Linux what Apple has done to Tiger: Make it boot faster. Jimmy wrote initng, a replacement for the Sys-V style "init" application. It allows for better service dependency checking and will start services in a highly parallel fashion, dramatically speeding up the Linux boot process."

In my small house I have a mac, two laptops, ibm netvista, NeXT turbo and two scrapped together desktop PCs running 24/7.. with all that plug a tv thats almost always on and AC thats running 24/7 my power bill last month was 40 bucks.

You obviously don't live in Southern Cal, where I've NEVER had an electricity bill below $50 (have been $150 before during the 'blackouts'). I NEVER have turned on heat or AC, just fridge, ocassional TV (don't even have cable) and a radio. That said, I still leave my laptop on 24/7, but shut the lid when it's not in use. Haven't rebooted in maybe 6 months, but I'm running linux so no problems. Not sure why everyone is concerned about boot times, totally irrelevant to me, even when I used to use dozer about 8 years ago I wasn't concerned with boot times - more concerned about a stable system (which windoze is NOT - argue with me all you want, but I'll ALWAYS win that debate).

Or alternately, you could switch to a Mac and find that with each system update, it works better - and without having to maintain your system as you would in Windows. Side benefits include no viruses, spyware, adware, trojans, and very little (if any) crashes.
The OS is solid as, fast even on old hardware (have you tried running XP Professional on a 1998 Pentium 2?), easy to use, intuitive, comes with iLife for everything you want to do digitally. The hardware lasts longer and has a better resale value after a couple of years.

Ever heard of power saving functions? Shut down your monitor, printer, and other additional gadgets, and put your PC to soft sleep. Actually, how much do you think a PC requires power when it does nothing, anyway (if not in sleep)?

When Microsoft uses it's "own" software as a comparison. "Less blue screens! Less boot time! Less waiting for applications to load!" (than the previous version)-That's like saying "look! our vehicles crash into a wall by themselves 50% LESS than they used to!"